Thank you sincerely for that question. I believe you've asked the right question.
We need to ask it more broadly. What do we want to do? What's our place in this new economy, this new society, which is now characterized by all kinds of things that everybody's talking about? The word “digital” is everywhere, but it's more than that. I won't go into the details, but I'm sure you understand that it's a much more complex phenomenon.
I believe that Canada is lagging behind in several ways. It's lagging mainly because the conversation that's required on this matter has not yet begun.
That's why I mentioned that we needed a transversal approach to address digital issues. The economy is digital. Society is now connected. We can't distinguish between the two or look at them in isolation. I believe that's the first phase.
People like me who work in the competition field, and also elsewhere, are impatiently waiting for the beginning of consultations on the modernization of the Competition Act. Canada needs to know what its values are, what its principles are and what it is going to build this architecture upon. Only then can we act.
The Europeans have done some thinking about it. They are very strong on human rights, and human dignity. They are very keen on individual consent and autonomy. All their legislation and all the rules… There is legislation on digital markets, digital services, artificial intelligence, the data act, in addition of course, to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. This provides an umbrella under which all these types of legislation can be organized.
It's important to point out that the Americans have adopted a different approach. Canada has several points in common with them, including the fact that they decided to proceed by means of adapting the mandates of the agencies concerned. These are mainly agencies traditionally linked to the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. Their mandate is to coordinate and hammer out policies, even though other agencies are of course involved.
Canada is late in terms of the big picture, but also in building its governance architecture.
Our Privacy Act is 20 years behind the times. We have no legislation on artificial intelligence. We have just created a data commissioner, but we don't know what that commissioner is going to do or how the position will really relate to other players like the Competition Commissioner or the Privacy Commissioner.
We need to decide what we want to do. That's where we're running late. We really need to address these questions in depth.
To conclude, I would say that it's going to be difficult and that there will have to be compromises. Not everyone will be prepared to sing from the same song sheet. There will be difficult decisions, but we need to make them. We have to set priorities and then create an appropriate governance architecture.